Max Damerell: Cathy Come Home (1966 BBC Television Play) - What has the early docudrama ‘Cathy Come Home’ contributed to the development of Reality TV? Discuss in the context of a contemporary Reality TV show.

‘Cathy Come Home’ was first shown on the BBC in November 1966. By June the following year the Beatles song writing team of Lennon and McCartney had released “She’s Leaving Home”. Clearly this was a time of social awareness, and a time when the British public, alerted by the media, felt they could and should, comment on and try to change the policies of the government of the day.

            Although the Lennon and McCartney song was a piece of musical fiction it reflected Cathy’s story and also the concerns of society/parents at the time. In the song the unnamed girl slips downstairs at 5 o’clock in the morning, leaving a note for her parents who then form a sort of Greek chorus of British public opinion:

            “She (We gave her most of our lives)

is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives)

Home (We gave her everything money could buy)”

(Lennon, McCartney, 1967).

            Paul McCartney has said since that the song was inspired by a front-page story from the Daily Mirror, about a 17-year-old girl who had run away from home (Miles, 1997). In the same way, ‘Cathy Come Home’ looked at social issues that were known about – homelessness, unemployment, and single mothers – but not widely discussed in the popular media, at that time. It was a new genre, a docudrama that gave “a voice to the working class experience and touch(ed) the social conscience of their audience” (Biressi, Nunn, 2005).

            Nearly fifty years later, ‘Benefits Street’ is a British series that first showed in January 2014. While it is described as a documentary, there are elements of reality television in its controversial story lines. ‘Benefits Street’, season two, has just finished its run in New Zealand. It was a good example of what Hill calls hybrid programming where “particular elements of reality programming…draw on the staple ingredients of tabloid journalism” (Hill, 2005) and where television producers, directors and writers give the point of view of a working class (or in this case the non-working class) community. The idea is to reach out to and influence the thinking and social conscience of the audience, just as ‘Cathy Come Home’ did in 1966. ‘Benefits Street’ might be promoted as a documentary but careful editing has made it more like reality television. As a film crew trails them, the residents of James Turner Street in Birmingham are shown committing crimes, cheating on their welfare payments and openly using drugs. This is reality television: the director has clearly given directives or suggestions to individuals that the audience would like to see, for example, how to get away with shop lifting. The subjects of the documentary following a pre-determined storyline are encouraged to act outside the law in order to entertain, to enrage and boost ratings (Price, 2014).

            ‘Cathy Come Home’ contributed to the development of Reality TV because it blurred “the boundaries between performance dramatization and documentary form” (Biressi, Nunn, 2005). Like ‘Benefits Street’, it showed ordinary people as “complex characters negotiating a complex world” and it was “poetic realism or observational documentary” (Biressi, Nunn, 2005). The naturalistic style of ‘Cathy Come Home’ was innovative at the time and helped to create the play’s impact. Many scenes were improvised. According to the BBC’s Witness programme, the final scene, where Cathy’s children are taken from her at a railway station, was filmed to include members of the public who were simply there at the time. As the camera rolled, Cathy is seen to be enormously distressed just as might happen in real life, but no one intervenes, no one steps in to help (BBC World Service, 2011). Some of the residents of ‘Benefits Street’ (James Turner Street) have claimed they were tricked into appearing in the documentary (Suart, 2014), and tricked into portraying some events as if they really happened that way. There is a view that careful editing intended to provoke a response from the viewing audience (Price, 2014), and that’s what makes ‘Benefit Street’ Reality TV: “non-professional actors, unscripted dialogue, surveillance footage, hand-held cameras, seeing events unfold as they are happening in front of the camera” (Hill, 2005). It was a style pioneered by ‘Cathy Come Home’, and was supported by the social issues of the day reflected in The Beatles’ song “She’s Leaving Home”.

            “She (We never thought of ourselves)

            Is leaving (Never a thought for ourselves)

Home (We struggled hard all our lives to get by)”

(Lennon, McCartney, 1967).

References:

·      BBC World Service: Witness: Cathy Come Home, 16 November 2011.

·      Biressi, A. & Nunn, N. (2005). Real Lives, documentary approaches. In Reality TV: realism and revelation. (pp. 35-58) London: Wallflower.

·      Hill, A. (2005) The reality genre. In A. Hill, Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. (pp. 14-40). Oxon: Routledge.

·      Hill, A. (2005) The rise of reality TV. In A. Hill, Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. (pp. 15-40). Oxon: Routledge.

·      McCartney, P., & Lennon, J. (1967). The Beatles Lyrics: She's Leaving Home. Retrieved from http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/beatles/shesleavinghome.html

·      Miles, Barry (1997). Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now. New York: Henry Holt & Company. ISBN 0-8050-5249-6.

·      Price, Garreth (22 February 2014). “Decoding Benefits Street: how Britain was divided by a television show”. The Guardian (Guardian Media Group). Retrieved 22 February 2014).

·      ·      Sandford, J. (1966). Cathy Come Home [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cathy+come+home

·      Suart, Paul (6 January 2014). “Benefits Street TV show lied to us, say Winson Green residents”. Birmingham Mail (Trinity Mirror). Retrieved 23 January 2014.